Staffelsee bei Murnau, 1847

CommentaryFew museums are fortunate enough to have two paintings by the same artist showing exactly the same motif but on a different size of canvas—or, in this case, board. These two versions of ›Staffelsee bei Murnau‹ (Lake Staffel near Murnau) show a view of Lake Staffel in the Werdenfelser Land in Upper Bavaria from just above Seehausen, which at the time of painting was little more than a tiny cluster of farms near the market town of Murnau. Christian Morgenstern, who undoubtedly counts as one of the most important exponents of early German Realism, focuses on the characteristic drama of light, which conspires here with some remarkably three-dimensional clouds to create a kind of skyscape extending across the full length of the horizon. This skyscape not only emancipates itself from the earthly landscape spread out below it, but actually appropriates it by bathing large parts of both hills and lake in the radiant orange of early evening. The natural spectacle thus staged for us extends over the flat expanse of water between the Herreninsel, in the right background, and the foothills of the Bad Kohlgrub Alps that includes Mount Hörnle, in the left.A direct comparison of the two paintings alerts us to certain differences, such as: the thick undergrowth occupying the right foreground, the variation of such typical Romantic tropes as the couple out walking, or the herdsman tending his flocks, and the direct, at times, almost impasto style of painting on the small wooden panel. This latter format allows us to surmise that Morgenstern first captured the motif as well as he could »en plein air« and then decided to produce a much larger version of the same Romantic view in the comfort of his studio.

Few museums are fortunate enough to have two paintings by the same artist showing exactly the same motif but on a different size of canvas—or, in this case, board. These two versions of ›Staffelsee bei Murnau‹ (Lake Staffel near Murnau) show a view of Lake Staffel in the Werdenfelser Land in Upper Bavaria from just above Seehausen, which at the time of painting was little more than a tiny cluster of farms near the market town of Murnau. Christian Morgenstern, who undoubtedly counts as one of the most important exponents of early German Realism, focuses on the characteristic drama of light, which conspires here with some remarkably three-dimensional clouds to create a kind of skyscape extending across the full length of the horizon. This skyscape not only emancipates itself from the earthly landscape spread out below it, but actually appropriates it by bathing large parts of both hills and lake in the radiant orange of early evening. The natural spectacle thus staged for us extends over the flat expanse of water between the Herreninsel, in the right background, and the foothills of the Bad Kohlgrub Alps that includes Mount Hörnle, in the left.A direct comparison of the two paintings alerts us to certain differences, such as: the thick undergrowth occupying the right foreground, the variation of such typical Romantic tropes as the couple out walking, or the herdsman tending his flocks, and the direct, at times, almost impasto style of painting on the small wooden panel. This latter format allows us to surmise that Morgenstern first captured the motif as well as he could »en plein air« and then decided to produce a much larger version of the same Romantic view in the comfort of his studio.